Quem? Drawing

He was born in 1975, Mauricio Mallet is a brazilian visual artist working also as a graphic designer, illustrator and art director. As an art enthusiast since early age he has focused his education in several forms of art expression being graduated in Fine and Visual Arts by important schools in Brazil. In addition to his creative performance also he teaches Fine Arts at Panamericana School of Art and Design and Digital Art at Alpha Channel School, two of the most significant art education institutions at São Paulo, Brazil. He uses specially oil and acrylic on paper, paper board, canvas... at his work, he creates abstract figures outlined by a single, dominant color. Grouped together pursuing a shared goal or as a standalone his subjects are joined in a form of ghostly camaraderie, gathered at the top of a slide or embracing as they walk. He gives their proximity to one another, the ease with which they coexist, and the playground accouterment, these children appear to be adolescents, not yet at the awkward stage of teenage discomfort, gender awareness, repulsion, and desire. They exist freely, without pretense, in the company of others. The paintings are a reminder of a shared past and barriers built up seemingly overnight. Often leaving a border around his work, he reminds his viewers that art is a construct, a manner of control that seems at odds with the content of his work. Perhaps the freedom of an idyllic childhood, the ability to love and care for without question, is a myth, an illusory past invented by a self-deceiving public in search of a better self. Perhaps memory is as treacherous as Magritte’s pipe, an unreality that has as little to do with the past as a painting of a pipe has to do with the pipe itself. Or maybe, the image was the truth and the analysis is the self-deception.